1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vibratory conveying apparatus used to align parts. The apparatus comprising a conveying chute for linearly conveying parts on a first conveying surface by reciprocating vibration from one end to the other end of the first conveying surface while aligning the posture of the parts or sorting them. The apparatus also comprising a linear return chute having a second conveying surface for returning parts dropped during the posture aligning or sorting process performed by the conveying chute to the one end of the conveying chute.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, vibratory feeders have been used in many factories for feeding parts (e.g., workpieces) stored under the random condition to a desired machining apparatus under the aligned condition. For example, the direction and posture of parts are corrected, sorted and aligned by a vibratory bowl feeder (e.g., parts feeder) and the parts discharged therefrom are linearly conveyed to a processing machine by a vibratory linear feeder (e.g., vibratory conveying apparatus). That is the linear feeder has functions not only of maintaining the posture of parts previously aligned in the vibratory bowl feeder and feeding the parts to a next processing machine but the linear feeder also functions as a buffer for pooling a constant amount of parts therein.
In such a circumstance if the aligning operation can be performed in the linear feeder, the vibratory bowl feeder will be omitted and several advantages e.g. of eliminating a floor area for installation of the bowl feeder, and of adopting a simpler linear arrangement of parts aligning members than a case of using the hopper feeder having a circular arc configuration can be obtained. Thus, a vibratory conveying apparatus has been proposed in which the alignment and feeding of parts can be performed by a linear feeder (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 97912/1984).
The vibratory conveying apparatus disclosed in the Laid-Open Patent Publication comprises two troughs each having a linear conveying surface an supported by a leaf spring, and a excitation mechanism for independently driving the troughs and structured so that the posture of parts is corrected and aligned to a predetermined direction and then conveyed to a next processing machine by one trough and parts which are not corrected and aligned are dropped on the other trough and conveyed in a reverse direction to return to the one trough.